I am experimenting with ways to perform live looping using Reaper. There are the hardware loopers that do it all through a foot controller, you then plug the analogue output into one of the audio channels that Reaper records; then there are the software based loopers implemented as a VSTi which can react to various midi keyboard presses or foot pedals to activate the looper.

At the moment I only have a midi keyboard with a sustain pedal. Hardware loopers or midi pedals may come later, trying to experiment to see what works best for me.

My end target is a bit vague as I am new to this. Have midi keyboard with sustain pedal, Reaper, and some analogue device instruments (will enter reaper via audio channel). Want to be able to loop any one of these devices, live for improvisations and practice sessions.

See that Cockos have their own software Looper, the Super8, ok but only can initiate the recording via pressing a midi key, but my hands will be busy holding and playing the analogue instrument, so really need it to be triggered by a foot pedal. Thought the sustain pedal could do that. Could not see a controller to midi key transform tool.

Have seen in some Reaper forums that Mobius is one way to do software based looping, so I give vers 2.5 a go on my Mac OX 10.12.5 (Sierra). Stand-alone fires up and looks OK, but when run from Reaper as a FX, the graphics are all messed up, making it unusable.

Any one experience the same problem and have a fix?

Alternative methods? Eventually will aim to get some basic on/off foot controllers and foot controlled pads to be able to send midi messages out, rout to reaper, and also perhaps from Reaper transform the message suitable for my POD6 hardware (sorry did not buy the Line6 Foot Controller only the Amp) to set it's effects and control like the Wah Wah. But thought keep it simple at first.

compact, relatively inexpensive. Simple to setup. I set the three switches to

Record
Overdub
Next Loop

on whatever track is selected. I setup TouchOSC to send MIDI to Mobius. With it I can select the track by reaching over and touching the track I need. I can also quickly mute tracks, which can kind of create a DJ effect. I've attached a screenshot of my TouchOSC setup.

Hopefully this is helpful. I tried all of the different loopers, and Mobius was the only one that did everything I needed it to do

In this live area Super8, and Mobius are discussed, so I will look at those. However Reaper custom action can also create a MIDI loop.

But something is amiss with "Quantize track MIDI recording". Notes are adjusted live but few playback, unless one MIDI event is deleted manually which of course doesn't work for live. But then all playback. So I had to give up on quantize during input.

Also being MIDI, it's super difficult to record the first note on the beat at the same time the loop record is begun. Foot control provides tempo tap via an action. If Reaper provides MIDI clock, can the clock output continue when the loop is stopped? Maybe the loop stop will have to start a silent click?

Initial results are promising, like being able to route the loop into BlueArp arpeggiator. What are your thoughts on how to improve Reaper live MIDI loop recording?

Track: Select track 02
Xenakos/SWS: Set selected tracks record armed
SWS: Set transport repeat state
Transport: Go to start of project
Time selection: Remove time selection
SWS: Delete all items on selected track(s)
Transport: Record

{perform some notes}

Press another FCB pedal, Loop end:

Transport: Record
SWS: Quantize item's end to grid (change length)
Item properties: Loop item source
Time selection: set time selection to items

(Another pedal for transport start/stop)

(This is a follow up post first done in control surfaces, there is some more detail there)

I am still experimenting. Now I know why some of the violin players that use loop pedal hardware, play barefoot, so you can feel the buttons. Ok, so what does this have to do with the price of eggs in China? At the moment have no funds for purchasing a midi foot controller, but do have a QWERTY blue tooth keyboard, I have tried this as a foot controller in a very basic way, pressing the space bar with my big toe barefoot -- works fine. So thinking some more about this, hacking an old QWERTY keyboard to modify as a foot controller for purely on/off switches ... . Even just using the space bar, but get the custom script to time between space bar presses to get different functionality.

I once had a set up using mobius through reaper... I used a small MIDI keyboard (e-mu xboard 25) and played the keys with my toes, with keys assigned to various functions and the dials assigned to various volumes, FX sends, etc.

Worked great, but man, mobius was a capable but confusing piece of software... trying to deduce the difference between a "loop" and a "clip" and a "layer" and a "track" and a "channel" and a "cycle" and a "subcycle" or whatever all the terms were (it was years ago), and the documentation didn't seem to help me, and everything seemed to use the wrong name, and nothing worked quite the way I expected... I got it working but it was always tenuous...